The room seemed less spacious once she was bedridden. Of the few activites she could participate in, reading was one she quite enjoyed, though her mind has been clouded by the curse of age- bad cess to time no doubt. Very few of her books remained untouched, one having become quite an antiquity in its years. This book, most recessed on the shelf, was what she claimed to be ‘haunted’. She claimed the very essence of the words would scream and wail in the depths of its cover, nevertheless, it appeared in her lap and before she could consider, she was 10 pages deep, already lost in the plot.

As she continued reading, the world seemed to stop, as the sounds of gunfire filled the air. Women and children screaming, muffled rioting in the streets, and a young woman, in front of her, speaking words with no meaning- an unvoiced cry- she tried to respond, but she couldn’t understand, she looked around, for someone, anyone to help, but as she took a moment to glance at herself, she was not a wise 84 year old woman suffering in her years, but a small girl with dirty clothes and grotesque living conditions. A fire erupts from the streets as a French soldier passes by.

All of this is new and terrifying, she should leave, but in the back of her mind she knows she can’t. This is where she’s meant to be, here, with this woman who speaks in tongues and voices she doesn’t recall. The sound of a plane passes overhead, followed by a heat, a ringing, then silence.

“Penvah ‘Penny’ Datuou, pronounced dead at 14:24, age 84.” It was the doctors, the